Voices Behind a Light

Ray heard voices as he floated through the darkness, though they seemed to be coming from quite far away. There was something scratchy over his eyes as well, and a firm pressure around his wrists. It was strange—only a moment before, the darkness had been completely devoid of sensation.

A soft humming began, rising in pitch, and then the sharp flick of something. A switch. The scratchy feeling disappeared as something was pulled from his face, and the darkness was replaced by a brilliant light that blinded Ray completely. He shut his eyes and flinched away from it, but something was holding him still. Sensation was returning quickly all around, and he realized that he was in a chair with his wrists bound behind him.

And then he remembered the last thing he’d felt before the darkness took him: cold steel exiting his body as an ORA agent in a tusked steel mask pulled a blood-stained blade from his chest.

“Who are you?” The voice came from beyond the light that flooded his vision, but Ray thought it sounded feminine. He remembered hearing something similar while he was still in the darkness.

“I’m called Ray,” he responded, “and my family name is Athan. Who’s asking?”

“That isn’t important right now,” the voice said. “I’m asking the questions, not you.”

Ray squinted hard, trying to catch a glimpse of whoever was behind the light. “And you started with ‘who are you’? I’ve got some bigger questions than that. Where is Legs? How am I still alive?”

There was a brief silence, and then a laugh broke it. It was deep and came from a second speaker to the left of the first voice. “It seems we have the same questions, then. We were hoping you could tell us. What happened in that alley, and why did you survive when your friend did not?”

“Legs is dead?” Ray asked. It should have been obvious—the agent’s sword had completely impaled his head, but when Ray came back to consciousness, he brought with him a small hope that whatever had spared him would have spared Legs as well.

“Is Legs the kid we found next to you?”

Ray nodded, wishing his hands were free to wipe his tears away.

“In that case, I’m sorry. He didn’t make it. If it’s any comfort, with the wounds I saw, he would have died instantly. There’s one thing that has me confused though, but it sounds like you don’t have an explanation. You should be dead too.”

Ray could only be silent then—he knew it to be true. The ORA agent had moved so quickly, and the memory seemed like a dream, but there was no questioning what had happened. “What did you see?” he finally asked. “When you found me, what was there?”

“Let us ask the questions for now,” the feminine voice said. “Just a few more, and then we’ll be able to speak more openly.”

“And if I answer your questions, you’ll answer all of mine?”

“That depends on your answers. If we find you to be honest and decide that you don’t pose a threat to us, I’ll tell you what I can.”

Ray peered into the light again, trying again to make out the faces behind it. Nothing made sense. The ORA wouldn’t have captured him for questioning after trying to kill him, but he had no idea who else would have any interest in what he had to say. “Ask away,” he said.

The first question came from the deep voice to Ray’s left. “Are you in any way affiliated with the ORA?” it asked.

“I work at the Farm near the alley where you found me.”

“Which, obviously, is owned by the city and the agency, but are you involved with them beyond that?”

Ray shook his head.

“Good. The second question is just as easy. Do you know how you survived the wound that I found in your chest?”

“You already know I don’t.”

“Just to be sure. How did you know Legs, and was he affiliated in any way with the ORA?”

“We…” Ray struggled to keep his voice firm. “We worked at the Farm together, but I don’t know anything beyond that. I didn’t even know his real name.”

“So, you weren’t close?”

Tears came in streams, and with his hands bound, Ray had to let them flow down his face. This time, his voice wavered and cracked as he shook his head. “He was my best friend.”

There was another stretch of silence as the voices behind the light let him cry.

When the deep voice spoke again, it was with a sympathetic softness. “I’m sorry to hear that, Ray, and I hope you’ll forgive me for asking such insensitive questions so soon after his passing. Please trust that it’s necessary. May I ask the next question? It will be the last one.”

Ray nodded. “Go ahead.”

“Did you grow that tree?”

Something clicked amid the fog of grief and confusion in Ray’s mind, and he finally understood why he was being questioned. The voices behind the light might have been shocked to see that he survived being impaled, but they wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble after stumbling across him in the bottom alleyways of the lower ring. No, they were interested in the other miracle, the one that, in the city of Portas, was far rarer than somebody coming back from the dead. A real, living tree.

“I didn’t grow it,” Ray said, “but I know who did.”

Ray heard motion behind the light. It was excitable, the kind of involuntary energy that couldn’t be contained.

“Who?” It was the feminine voice asking again. “And how?”

“Take the lights down,” Ray said, staring into them unblinkingly for the first time, “and untie me. Then, I might tell you.”

A third stretch of silence, and then the deep voice burst it with a peal of laughter. “I like this one,” it said. “What do we think, do we trust him?”

A new voice to the right of the other two, spoke up. “His heartbeat has been as steady as we could hope for under the circumstances, and I picked up no other indicators of dishonesty. He’s scared, maybe, and confused, but we are as well. I trust him.

“I do as well,” spoke the feminine voice.

“Well, you know I like the kid. I suppose it’s time for some proper introductions, Ray.”

Someone with a huge frame stepped past the light and moved behind Ray before his eyes could adjust well enough to make him out. The bonds around his wrists, then those around his ankles, were released. At the same time, the light began to fade, and Ray realized that three massive spotlights were powering down. Whoever had untied Ray returned to their place, and when his eyes were acclimated to the normal light of the room, Ray found himself in a small room with bare steel walls, sitting face to face with three of the most mismatched people he had ever seen.

Sitting in a chair directly ahead of him, with her legs tucked up beneath her, was a small woman with dark skin and tight curls chopped down close to her head. She wore large glasses with round frames, and a scar ran beneath one lens from her cheekbone to her hairline. Still, it was the eyes that caught Ray’s attention. They were steel-gray and intense, and bored into his.

To her right was the man who had declared Ray’s heartbeat steady. When it had happened, Ray had been unsure how he had been able to tell, and his confusion doubled when the man was revealed by the fading light. Like the woman, his eyes were the first thing that caught Ray’s attention, but it wasn’t for their intensity. His eyes were milky white and surrounded by a sea of scarred flesh, as if the upper half of his face had been burned away. Long, black hair fell over that face, narrowly avoiding the lit end of a rolled cigarette, and he sat with perfect posture—his flowing clothes looked like they had been wrapped around a statue. He wore thin brown gloves over each hand.

Finally, to the left of them both, grinning ear to ear, was the broad-shouldered man who had undone Ray’s restraints. He was dressed in the heavy gray worker’s clothes that were common around the lower ring, though his were covered in bloodstains that were found less often. Above the workwear, he wore a beautifully manicured beard with his moustache twisted up at the ends and sported hair that was carefully slicked back, not a strand out of place. He rubbed his hands together, and Ray thought one might be the size of his head.

“Well,” he said, “I suppose I’ll start out the introductions. My name is Boucher Yves, and I’m the one that grabbed you from the alley. I couldn’t believe my eyes, seeing your chest stitch itself together like that.”

“My chest was what?” Ray asked, but Yves had already continued.

“This lovely young girl next to me is Olowe Ade,” he said, “and the man on the end likes to introduce himself.”

“Higuchi Watane,” the blind man said. “I hope you’ll forgive Yves for speaking over you. He gets excited.”

“It’s alright,” Ray said. “I just—can you start at the beginning? I need to know what’s going on.”

“Of course, of course,” Yves said. “I’m getting ahead of myself. I came after you when I heard the cleanup call. Originally, I was going more for the tree than for you. No offense, but agents kill people all the time in the lower levels, so it doesn’t really warrant a trip on its own. A tree though? I thought I was hallucinating when I heard it.”

“I thought I was hallucinating when I saw it,” Ray said.

“Anyone would have. Even when I arrived and saw it chopped up and smashed into the ground, I felt like I was looking at a miracle. That’s when you caught my eye, though. I’d marked you as dead when I arrived, but while I was gathering some seeds from the smashed apples, I heard a noise. It was so quiet, I’m not even sure if it counted as a breath, but I looked over and the hole in your chest was healing itself. The blood was still there, but all the tissue was just stitching itself back together. By the time I’d brought you back here, there wasn’t even a scar.”

“Has anything like that happened to you before?” Ade asked. “Even if it’s not on that scale, do your injuries heal quickly?”

Ray thought back to all the cuts and scrapes he’d earned at the Farm, and even further back to the little hurts that he’d accumulated growing up. Sure, they’d never lingered and scarred, but that didn’t mean he should be able to recover from a sword through the chest. “I can’t remember any that were bad enough to say,” he replied.

“What about the marks on your back?”

Her follow-up question took Ray by surprise. It had been a long time since he’d really thought about those marks, and even longer since he’d allowed anyone to see them. For as long as he could remember, there had been a long scar along his spine from his tailbone to the base of his neck, and at the upper end of it were the ridges of a brand that read GRT004. He knew Ade must have seen them when she tried to inspect his other wound, but it still made him uncomfortable to know they’d been examined.

“I’ve had those since I was a kid,” Ray said. “I don’t remember how I got them.”

“And your parents?” she asked. “Would they know why those haven’t healed, when a fatal wound like the agent gave you disappeared completely in under an hour?”

Ray shrugged. “They might. I don’t remember my parents either.”

Ade fell silent, and Yves took back over. “She doesn’t mean to pry, kid. Well, she does, but she doesn’t mean anything by it. We just want to know what’s going on.”

“With the tree, right?”

“Well, mostly with the tree, but you’ve proven yourself quite the curiosity as well.”

Ray found himself wanting to mirror Yves’s smile. “Since I don’t know any better than you do what’s going on with me, I guess we can talk about the tree. What do you want to know?”

Yves’s smile widened, and Ray noticed Ade lean forward and Watane take a long drag from his cigarette. “Everything you know,” the huge man said. “Who grew it? How did they manage? What techniques allowed a tree to grow to full maturity in one of the most toxic parts of the city?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Ray said, finally allowing himself a hint of a smile.

“After everything I’ve seen today,” Yves replied, “I think I might believe anything.”

“If I tell you, do you promise to tell me exactly why you’re so interested?”

Yves looked to Ade, and she gave him a small nod. “I can do better than tell you,” he said. “I can show you.”

Ray looked over to Watane. “Tell them if I’m lying,” he said. “I have a feeling they’re going to need your confirmation.” The blind man nodded, and Ray continued. “I met a woman in that alley who could grow plants with her touch. I don’t know if it’s a miracle or some other form of magic, but she grew an apple for me from the palm of her hand.”

Ade and Yves stared at Watane, who cracked a smile. “He’s telling the truth.”

Yves erupted with laughter, and Ade’s stare redoubled in intensity. She looked at Ray as if he were a puzzle that she couldn’t quite solve.

“A deal’s a deal,” Yves said, still laughing, and he waved Ray over to the door of the small room they were in. “Open the door, and I think you’ll understand why I brought you in.”

Ray rested his hand on the cold metal door handle and felt his three interrogators gathering behind him. Somehow, he was more nervous that they trusted him to see behind the door than he had been when they were questioning him from behind the light. It felt like a door that couldn’t be closed once it was open.

But maybe he’d already opened a few such doors. Maybe it was his first bite of a real apple that had set him on an inescapable path. Legs was dead and he was supposed to be—that would never change. He took a deep breath and pushed the door open.

In the room beyond, beneath bright, warm lights, were rows of green and brown. Plants—real plants—grew beneath the fake suns suspended above them, reaching towards the ceiling. There were more types than Ray new existed, and every one of them was completely illegal.

As if he could read Ray’s mind, Watane spoke up. “Welcome to our little nursery,” he said. “Everything in this room, including you and us, is criminal in the eyes of the ORA.”